The Romans set January as the first month of the year. Originally, March had been the start of the new year. But the early Roman kings, before the republic, moved it to coincide with Janus, a two-faced god who looked backward with an old face and forward with a young face. Julius Caesar realigned Roman governance around January being the start of a new year of governance.
The reality, however, is it is arbitrary and we have all given great psychological importance to it. The pagans of Rome engaged in debauchery and resolutions for the new year — something modernity has embraced. The early Christians turned the first day of the year into a holy day to curb people’s pagan behaviors. Most of Western society has returned to revelry and resolutions instead of quiet reflection and worship on what is the eighth day of Christmas.
The prior year’s anxieties have not gone away. Early on New Year’s Day, a terrorist in New Orleans unleashed carnage. A few hours later, another in Las Vegas blew up a Tesla Cybertruck in front of the Trump Hotel. The former was a veteran and the latter was an active-duty soldier. The former, as of this writing, seems to have crumbled under the weight of his life, converted to Islam and radicalized. There is still much to be determined about the latter. Given his act, my guess is he was steeped in progressivism and broken by the election.
For the last four years, the Biden administration has insisted that conservative white Christians in America are the biggest domestic terror threat, but we keep seeing left-wingers and Islamic radicals engaging in terror. From repeated attempts on Donald Trump’s life to the carnage in New Orleans, the only violence right-wing Christians have committed is at the ballot box against the left. But that is enough to certify them as dangerous to much of the press and Democratic Party.
On the right, online, people continue to lose their minds just as badly as the left. In the final days of December, fog set in around the country as it often does in the winter. Right-wing sleuths online began trading conspiracy theories that it might be something sinister. Elon Musk monetizing X (formerly Twitter) incentivized clickbait and sensationalism. The more someone gets circulated, the more money that person makes. So fog becomes sinister mind control particles because that gets clicks. Fog does not.
Likewise, people have insisted on connecting the two terrorists on New Year’s Day. We have been warned since the days of George W. Bush that “lone wolves” would be the biggest terrorist threat, white Christians notwithstanding that. Two seemed to operate on the same day, and many people, steeped now too deeply in online paranoia, have insisted lines must be connected and conclusions must be drawn.
The media and government have not helped matters. The distrust in government and the press continues to contribute to our nation’s unraveling. The arrogance of the American media, inhibiting its ability to self-correct, is only dragging its reputation further down. On New Year’s Day, the rush of reports about the New Orleans attack caused conflicting information. The FBI made matters worse by first stating it was looking for others, then that the attacker was acting with others, then that there was no one else, and lastly that the attacker was a lone wolf. The rush to explain to an interested nation conflicted with the need to get it right. All the while, the conspiracists trotted out their own theories.
We may be in a new year, but we have the same problems and many of them continue to fester. The more online people are, particularly on Bluesky and X, the worse these issues will fester as people abuse trust and seed lies, all for revenue and clout. We could use an honest media, but the media is too broken. We could use a competent government, but that may be asking for too much. Instead, perhaps, we should all go touch some grass and reconnect with the world and people who are actually around us.
Erick Erickson is a syndicated columnist.
